Kevin Jones, who for the sake of anonymity shall henceforth be referred to as “Kevin J,” is a 12-stepper who has taken enough time off from his serenity and otherwise strict adherence to AA’s 10th tradition, to post a must-read review of Stanton Peele’s and Ilse’s book. He didn’t much care for it, and gave it a single star.

“Peele attacks Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) repeatedly, in ways that show no real knowledge. Yes, there is religiosity in AA, but many members simply ignore it. Since 1975 there have been explicitly secular AA groups, with such names as “We Agnostics”. Peele never mentions the AA-published book, “Living Sober”, which is secular and gives excellent advice for getting and staying sober. Peele never mentions two important organizations: Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS) and LifeRing. Peele never mentions the AA Preamble, which concisely tells exactly what AA is and is not. He never mentions the Traditions, which have kept AA alive for three-quarters of a century. He never mentions the great freedom in AA — for the group and for the individual — nor the fact that AA is entirely free.

In short, this book is both worthless and harmful. One star is one star too many.”

On the plus side, Kevin J gives the Lance Dodes Serenity Voodoo Doll™ a full five stars. Maybe I’ll buy one to help relieve the stress of Ilse charging me full price to read her sham of a book.

If you’ve been a regular, you’ll notice that I took down the last two posts on the subject of Jim Bock and the Sponsorship Group in Chatham, NJ. I want to be clear that the episode detailed in those posts did not drive us to close the blog, so I’m going to tell the story again with more clarity.

Now then:

There is someone leaving comments on forums around the internet about someone named Jim Bock who runs the Sponsorship Group in Chatham, New Jersey. They’re hit-n-run cut/paste comments that look like this:

One of the all time most pathetic and dangerous AA groups ever is based out of Chatham NJ. They are called the Sponsorship Group and their leader is Jim B.

Dictator Jim B. and his disciples have been ruining the lives of young women since at least 2000. To call what they do “13th Stepping” would be a compliment. Imagine a group of people with no medical or psyciatric training that tell people how and why they need to stop taking necessary medication! It’s a disgrace. People have suffered and in some cases are dead as a direct result of this groups actions!

Jim B. and his disciples at the Sponsorship Group all have SG tatoo on their wrists and live by the rules of Jim B. He takes advatage of people who are in need of help. He should be charged with mental abuse and should have to register as a sex offender. He will experience KARMA soon.

A few of these comments appeared here (using the full last name), buried in the discussion section of random posts, and they were not on my radar.

“I planned a good laugh in Nov about ST referring people to the non-AA forum I help out with, but doing it this early was a decision I was not involved in, and I take offense with those who took it on themselves to violate my privacy to this degree. That’s not something you or I or I believe most people would do.”

– JD (also Mondotuna, Jerry, Cabledude, Mr Guestperson, farquar the quail); in a response to us outing him as a double secret agent.

There’s a coming apocalypse over at LifeRing, at least according to our favorite cyber lunatic, JD – who channelled his inner Harold Camping and informed us that something big was happening there this November. He was really disappointed that we prevented him from being able to laugh about it all from the inside, but I’m sure he was able to supplant what we took from him with other things that give him the jollies. You know…taking candy from babies and pulling the legs off of frogs and such.

Still, we’re left to wonder exactly when this will happen. And what exactly will be the cause of their demise? Will it be a natural occurrence, or will Mondotuna himself help to bring them down? I have no idea. I’ve got two balls, and neither one of them are crystal. I’ll leave the predicting up to our soothsaying cyber stalker, and the guesses up to you people. Let’s have a contest!

On what date will the LifeRing rapture happen, and how?

The one who predicts closest will win my undying admiration, and get to pick my next set of lottery numbers.

One of our AA trolls made the following two quotes, each one on a separate forum. It made me chuckle seeing both of these next to each other.

So…which troll?

“…Sponsoring was a very difficult process for me. Staying out of the way.The only genuine unconditional prayer I could think of to say for others when I first began coming around was, “Gods Will Not Ours Be Done”. But then I would have to assume I knew Gods Will for everyone. I don’t. Today, I don’t pray much for others, I try at times but then I can see this is between God and them. I just pray for his guidance for me. This seems to be enough to help me get back on the path.”

A Life Gone Awry: My Story of the Elan School, is now available on Amazon. I have not read the whole book, but I have skimmed over the parts that reference one of our resident trolls, Danny Bennison (aka; Diablo/Cuggle/Quagmire/Claude). Currently, he’s cyber-stalking some of our readers, and is taking up residence with two other AA stooges and ST trolls, Mondotuna and A.A. Alfie, over at the JREF forum. They’re just like the Three Amigos, if the Three Amigos suffered from delusion and sociopathy.

This must be a proud moment in Danny’s career. It’s one thing to gain recognition as an assclown on internet blogs and forums, but quite another to have a book written about him, chronicling his real-life victimization of vulnerable teenagers. Congratulations, Danny!

Guess who crawled out of his troll hole! Yep. Just when you think you’re rid of him, he’s back, and he’s going viral. Like a scorching case of herpes. Be careful if you’re linked in any way to this blog. He’s in stalking mode. This is a fairly innocuous and ridiculous comment he made the other day at Scientific American. If you see him around, make sure you tell him “howdy.”:

“Bankole comes out of the woodwork when celebrities get into trouble behind their drinking.

Because he’s paid by pharma companies to develop meds for alcoholism you can expect he’d pump that approach at every opportunity.

I imagine if he ever finds one that works it’s likely that he’ll go ahead and say something about it. In the meantime all he can give is generalities that meds are a great way to go for alcoholism.

The next time the interviewing reporter hears that meds work really well and are evidence based treatment, perhaps the reporter will ask to be shown the evidence that these meds are working as well as BJ and his pharma buddies want us to believe.

OK, kiddos. It’s time to put those brain cells you’ve managed to retain to use. Yesterday, we received a comment that got caught in our troll trap, under the name “Banjomansband.” Rather than let it sluice through, we thought it would be fun to make a contest of it, in a “Guess the Troll” contest. [Hint: It’s someone we know and lub.]

It’s not enough to just guess the name. Please show your work. Entrants are judged by use of logic, wit and deliciousness; with bonus points awarded to whoever can explain to us the actual point this guy is trying to make:

“We have check the link out MA and find it ridiculous. Why you would want to print such rubbish is beyond us.
Yes it is several people having a say here. A couple of us post on JREF’s this is where we first heard of you. You post under a another name, why, are you hiding something.
Seems you keep pulling this disgusting stunt every time he posts on a site you or ftg posted on.
It seems he doesn’t like you and what you stand for so he takes the fight to you directly, what a concept. You folks do it here everyday. You jump into blogs, sites, newspapers ect…pull out what you want and post it here including people faces. You did this with Alfie, right. So when it is done to you, you fight back dirty.
Now your after Alfie to look at this link, well we suggest he does, please get it over with. Anything to stop you from soapboxing this link.
We don’t know this guy really and probably won’t but it seems low down that you would pull this shit and call yourselves respectable.
Grow Up!”

Hey, did you know that you can go on a tour of Dr. Bob’s house? You should go! But check the reviews before you make plans, and make sure you scroll down and read them all, just so you get a clear idea of all the wonders that this pilgrimage promises…